Thursday, January 07, 2010

Being Home

Being home this time was a little weird. It was wonderful to be with family, for sure. But it wasn’t quite like any other experience I’ve had before. It was a lot like being in college and coming home on Christmas break, a throwback of the distant past. But I am married and my wife was with me. It was kind of like visiting our parents’ house during the trip when we stopped in Portland, but still, it felt different than that too. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly how it felt.

Living in your parents’ home can be uncomfortable. It’s just not ideal to be an adult who happily manages your own household and then live under someone else’s roof, particularly your parents. Fortunately, our parents are wonderful and they just treat us as honored guests. We really enjoyed the unending time with them. Any feelings about living as a guest and the discomforts therein are very much dissipated by our wonderful families.

In fact, one of the hardest things about coming home is that it gave us all the time and space an access we needed to think about just how much we do miss our families.

Still, it was an odd experience at times. I think maybe it is safe to say it feels a little strange to be a student. I love it and like it for so many reasons, but there is some way that it feels a little anachronistic.